Envisioning Integrated AI Tools for Precision Pathology

Anil Parwani, MD, PhD, professor of pathology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, explains his visions and plans for further development and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in cancer diagnosis and prognosis.

According to Parwani, his goal is to develop a comprehensive AI tool that functions similarly to widely-used applications like Microsoft Word or email to provide a holistic view of patient health. This tool would potentially feature advanced capabilities, including heat maps to indicate cancer location and extent. He also explains that the ideal tool would integrate various data points, including genomics and blood tests.

Transcription:

0:09 | Ultimately, what would be great is to have a tool, like a more pan AI tool, not just focused on prostate cancer or bladder cancer or gastric cancer, but this becomes an app on your monitor just like Microsoft Word or an email where, when it is launched, [we] can see a heat map of where the cancer is, how much of the cancer there is, and start to create very powerful signatures of the patient's outcomes, looking at the whole patient, not just their prostate, and getting a more integrated view of the patient with their genomics and with their blood tests.

1:01 | Ultimately, many of the many data points that we collect in medicine are in silos. They are in different systems, and the goal will be [to see] if AI can help us bring this information together to know exactly what is going on with these patients. Even though 2 patients have the same disease, their cancer is very different, even though it looks the same. So, can we go beyond just a very superficial diagnosis and grading by AI, [and] create a more comprehensive, predictive profile of their disease or their cancer and make it so it is precision pathology? My vision is to create precision pathology for every patient using these tools.